Tournament: Harvard | Round: 5 | Opponent: Newport JQ | Judge: greg stevens
Starlink Mega-Constellations enables advanced Weather Forecasting.
Erwin 20 Sandra Erwin 10-14-2020 "SpaceX to explore ways to provide weather data to U.S. military" https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-explore-ways-to-provide-weather-data-to-u-s-military/ (Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense Magazine and Pentagon correspondent for Real Clear Defense.)Elmer
The $2 million contract is to “assess the feasibility and long term viability of a ‘weather data as a service business model.” WASHINGTON — SpaceX is looking at ways it could provide weather data to the U.S. military. The company is working under a $2 million six-month study contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center. Charlotte Gerhart, chief of the Space and Missile Systems Center Production Corps Low Earth Orbit Division, said in a statement to SpaceNews that SpaceX received the contract in July from SMC’s Space Enterprise Consortium. The contract is to “assess the feasibility and long term viability of a ‘weather data as a service business model,’” said Gerhart. SpaceX did not respond to questions from SpaceNews on how the company would leverage the Starlink internet constellation to provide weather data. The contract awarded to SpaceX is part of a Space Force program called Electro Optical/Infrared Weather System (EO/IR EWS). The consortium in June awarded $309 million in contracts to Raytheon Technologies, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, and Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates to develop weather satellite prototypes and payloads. SpaceX won the portion of the EO/IR EWS program that is looking at how weather data could be purchased as a service from a commercial company. “The EWS program goal remains to provide a more resilient and higher refresh capability, enhancing global terrestrial weather capability,” said Gerhart. The SpEC consortium was created in 2017 to attract commercial space businesses to work with the military. The contracts awarded by SpEC are known as “other transaction authority” deals that are used for research projects and prototyping. The consortium on Oct. 8 informed its members that SpaceX had won the weather study contract. “The Air Force is pursuing a space-based environmental monitoring EO/IR system in a multi phased approach,” the SpEC said in an email to members. The EO/IR EWS program is looking at a future proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation to focus on cloud characterization and theater weather imagery that could be supplemented by commercial services. SpaceX’s contract is for the “weather data as a service system architecture exploration phase,” said SpEC. Industry sources speculated that SpaceX could provide weather data collected by sensors hosted on its own Starlink satellites, or it could team with a weather data services company and use Starlink to distribute the data to customers. One executive noted that both the U.S. military and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have growing demands for data that can be provided at relatively low cost from companies that operate proliferated LEO systems.
Advanced Weather Forecasting solves Climate Change.
Taylor-Smith 21 Kerry Taylor-Smith 3-25-2021 "What Role can Advanced Weather Forecasting have in Providing Climate Crisis Solutions?" https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1193 (Pursuing a passion for science, Kerry completed a degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Bath; where she studied a range of topics, including chemistry, biology, and environmental sciences. Her passion for writing grew as she worked on the university newspaper as a contributor, feature editor, and editor.)Elmer
Humankind is in the midst of a climate crisis, battling to prevent global temperatures from rising while also keeping up with the energy demands of a growing population. Weather-related disasters cost billions of dollars each year, but it is not just the financial cost that should be considered – there is the loss of life, homes, wildlife, and infrastructure. There are several ways weather monitoring can help solve the climate crisis, from lowing transportation emissions to pinpointing extreme weather events such as wildfires and extraordinary variations in temperature. Tackling Emissions Global travel and shipping contribute significantly to global warming. Aircraft, ships, cars – nearly all modes of transportation emit harmful greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, but also nitrous and sulfur oxides as well as particulates. These greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing an overall warming effect and a negative impact on our climate. Aviation accounts for 2.4 of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, with international flights in 2019 producing 915 million tons of the gas. Weather forecasting technology providing accurate, real-time data on meteorological conditions can help airlines adjust routes to avoid headwinds or take advantage of favorable winds, both of which can help reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Shipping is one of the most fuel-efficient means of transport, but also one of the most polluting, contributing 3 of all greenhouse gas emissions - a figure expected to almost double by 2050. “Burning bunker fuel accounts for almost 90 of global sulfur emissions and the 15 largest ships in the world produce more sulfur each year than all cars put together,” states Renny Vandewege, Vice President of Weather Operations at DTN, a company providing decision support tools and forecast insights across many sectors. Shipping discharges a large and growing source of noxious gas but the sector has the potential to drastically cut emissions through fuel-saving techniques. Among the most promising is weather routing. “Using weather information and analytics can help mitigate risks today caused by climate change and can also reduce emissions further reducing future impacts”, explains Vandewege, a former director of the Broadcast Meteorology Program at Mississippi State University. Weather analytics can optimize routes and “reduce emissions up to 4 and reduce fuel consumption up to 10, depending on the type of vessel, the season, and the conditions,” states Vandewege. “If there’s bad weather ahead, sophisticated algorithms that use information about the ship and its capabilities and the weather effects on that specific ship can make numerous calculations and provide optimal route alternatives for the mariner.” Extreme Weather Events Advanced weather forecasting alerts us to the probability of extreme meteorological events occurring. While these events are largely unpredictable, accurate meteorological data can identify hotspots where they are likely to occur. The better the data, the better prepared the general public and authorities can be. Wildfires have ravaged the US state of California and huge swathes of land in Australia. Climate change is responsible for the increasing intensity and occurrence of blazes, not just here, but worldwide. It has created the optimal conditions for wildfires to start, including warmer weather, less precipitation, dryer vegetation, and stronger winds. Advanced weather forecasting, such as DTN’s live Geographic Information System (GIS) can monitor atmospheric conditions to evaluate wildfire risk and predict areas where conditions are just right for a wildfire to ignite. “Fire weather forecasting uses atmospheric conditions to evaluate wildfire risk,” explains Vendewege. “Meteorologists can also use their tools and experience to identify the specific location of wildfires. Sophisticated imaging systems can show fire locations in real time, allowing for a live look at the conditions using a GIS layer service containing the latest fire hotspot data and also showing the likelihood of a fire.” Machine learning, a means of artificial intelligence, can also be used in conjunction with current forecasting methods to predicts heat waves or cold snaps. These extreme weather events are the result of unusual atmospheric patterns that researchers from Rice University realized could be taught to a pattern recognition program. The technology, designed to work with current analog forecasting systems rather than replace them, could predict events with 80 accuracy, five days before the event occurred. Although only proof-of-concept, the technology could provide an early warning about when and where an extreme weather event might occur. Conclusion Humans are heavily reliant on the weather; it has a role in every aspect of our lives, from feeding us to providing power for our ever-growing needs. Climate change has warmed the planet and altered our weather, making extreme weather events such as droughts and floods more likely. High-tech weather forecasting technology can help in the fight against climate change by monitoring meteorological conditions to aid decision making, whether that be in the aviation or shipping industry, or by helping us understand and predict natural hazards and disasters, allowing us to reduce the risk of adverse events – and the costs, environmental, economic or otherwise.
Warming causes Extinction
Kareiva 18, Peter, and Valerie Carranza. "Existential risk due to ecosystem collapse: Nature strikes back." Futures 102 (2018): 39-50. (Ph.D. in ecology and applied mathematics from Cornell University, director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, Pritzker Distinguished Professor in Environment and Sustainability at UCLA)Re-cut by Elmer
In summary, six of the nine proposed planetary boundaries (phosphorous, nitrogen, biodiversity, land use, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution) are unlikely to be associated with existential risks. They all correspond to a degraded environment, but in our assessment do not represent existential risks. However, the three remaining boundaries (climate change, global freshwater cycle, and ocean acidification) do pose existential risks. This is because of intrinsic positive feedback loops, substantial lag times between system change and experiencing the consequences of that change, and the fact these different boundaries interact with one another in ways that yield surprises. In addition, climate, freshwater, and ocean acidification are all directly connected to the provision of food and water, and shortages of food and water can create conflict and social unrest. Climate change has a long history of disrupting civilizations and sometimes precipitating the collapse of cultures or mass emigrations (McMichael, 2017). For example, the 12th century drought in the North American Southwest is held responsible for the collapse of the Anasazi pueblo culture. More recently, the infamous potato famine of 1846–1849 and the large migration of Irish to the U.S. can be traced to a combination of factors, one of which was climate. Specifically, 1846 was an unusually warm and moist year in Ireland, providing the climatic conditions favorable to the fungus that caused the potato blight. As is so often the case, poor government had a role as well—as the British government forbade the import of grains from outside Britain (imports that could have helped to redress the ravaged potato yields). Climate change intersects with freshwater resources because it is expected to exacerbate drought and water scarcity, as well as flooding. Climate change can even impair water quality because it is associated with heavy rains that overwhelm sewage treatment facilities, or because it results in higher concentrations of pollutants in groundwater as a result of enhanced evaporation and reduced groundwater recharge. Ample clean water is not a luxury—it is essential for human survival. Consequently, cities, regions and nations that lack clean freshwater are vulnerable to social disruption and disease. Finally, ocean acidification is linked to climate change because it is driven by CO2 emissions just as global warming is. With close to 20 of the world’s protein coming from oceans (FAO, 2016), the potential for severe impacts due to acidification is obvious. Less obvious, but perhaps more insidious, is the interaction between climate change and the loss of oyster and coral reefs due to acidification. Acidification is known to interfere with oyster reef building and coral reefs. Climate change also increases storm frequency and severity. Coral reefs and oyster reefs provide protection from storm surge because they reduce wave energy (Spalding et al., 2014). If these reefs are lost due to acidification at the same time as storms become more severe and sea level rises, coastal communities will be exposed to unprecedented storm surge—and may be ravaged by recurrent storms. A key feature of the risk associated with climate change is that mean annual temperature and mean annual rainfall are not the variables of interest. Rather it is extreme episodic events that place nations and entire regions of the world at risk. These extreme events are by definition “rare” (once every hundred years), and changes in their likelihood are challenging to detect because of their rarity, but are exactly the manifestations of climate change that we must get better at anticipating (Diffenbaugh et al., 2017). Society will have a hard time responding to shorter intervals between rare extreme events because in the lifespan of an individual human, a person might experience as few as two or three extreme events. How likely is it that you would notice a change in the interval between events that are separated by decades, especially given that the interval is not regular but varies stochastically? A concrete example of this dilemma can be found in the past and expected future changes in storm-related flooding of New York City. The highly disruptive flooding of New York City associated with Hurricane Sandy represented a flood height that occurred once every 500 years in the 18th century, and that occurs now once every 25 years, but is expected to occur once every 5 years by 2050 (Garner et al., 2017). This change in frequency of extreme floods has profound implications for the measures New York City should take to protect its infrastructure and its population, yet because of the stochastic nature of such events, this shift in flood frequency is an elevated risk that will go unnoticed by most people. 4. The combination of positive feedback loops and societal inertia is fertile ground for global environmental catastrophes Humans are remarkably ingenious, and have adapted to crises throughout their history. Our doom has been repeatedly predicted, only to be averted by innovation (Ridley, 2011). However, the many stories of human ingenuity successfully addressing existential risks such as global famine or extreme air pollution represent environmental challenges that are largely linear, have immediate consequences, and operate without positive feedbacks. For example, the fact that food is in short supply does not increase the rate at which humans consume food—thereby increasing the shortage. Similarly, massive air pollution episodes such as the London fog of 1952 that killed 12,000 people did not make future air pollution events more likely. In fact it was just the opposite—the London fog sent such a clear message that Britain quickly enacted pollution control measures (Stradling, 2016). Food shortages, air pollution, water pollution, etc. send immediate signals to society of harm, which then trigger a negative feedback of society seeking to reduce the harm. In contrast, today’s great environmental crisis of climate change may cause some harm but there are generally long time delays between rising CO2 concentrations and damage to humans. The consequence of these delays are an absence of urgency; thus although 70 of Americans believe global warming is happening, only 40 think it will harm them (http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2016/). Secondly, unlike past environmental challenges, the Earth’s climate system is rife with positive feedback loops. In particular, as CO2 increases and the climate warms, that very warming can cause more CO2 release which further increases global warming, and then more CO2, and so on. Table 2 summarizes the best documented positive feedback loops for the Earth’s climate system. These feedbacks can be neatly categorized into carbon cycle, biogeochemical, biogeophysical, cloud, ice-albedo, and water vapor feedbacks. As important as it is to understand these feedbacks individually, it is even more essential to study the interactive nature of these feedbacks. Modeling studies show that when interactions among feedback loops are included, uncertainty increases dramatically and there is a heightened potential for perturbations to be magnified (e.g., Cox, Betts, Jones, Spall, and Totterdell, 2000; Hajima, Tachiiri, Ito, and Kawamiya, 2014; Knutti and Rugenstein, 2015; Rosenfeld, Sherwood, Wood, and Donner, 2014). This produces a wide range of future scenarios. Positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle involves the enhancement of future carbon contributions to the atmosphere due to some initial increase in atmospheric CO2. This happens because as CO2 accumulates, it reduces the efficiency in which oceans and terrestrial ecosystems sequester carbon, which in return feeds back to exacerbate climate change (Friedlingstein et al., 2001). Warming can also increase the rate at which organic matter decays and carbon is released into the atmosphere, thereby causing more warming (Melillo et al., 2017). Increases in food shortages and lack of water is also of major concern when biogeophysical feedback mechanisms perpetuate drought conditions. The underlying mechanism here is that losses in vegetation increases the surface albedo, which suppresses rainfall, and thus enhances future vegetation loss and more suppression of rainfall—thereby initiating or prolonging a drought (Chamey, Stone, and Quirk, 1975). To top it off, overgrazing depletes the soil, leading to augmented vegetation loss (Anderies, Janssen, and Walker, 2002). Climate change often also increases the risk of forest fires, as a result of higher temperatures and persistent drought conditions. The expectation is that forest fires will become more frequent and severe with climate warming and drought (Scholze, Knorr, Arnell, and Prentice, 2006), a trend for which we have already seen evidence (Allen et al., 2010). Tragically, the increased severity and risk of Southern California wildfires recently predicted by climate scientists (Jin et al., 2015), was realized in December 2017, with the largest fire in the history of California (the “Thomas fire” that burned 282,000 acres, https://www.vox.com/2017/12/27/16822180/thomas-fire-california-largest-wildfire). This catastrophic fire embodies the sorts of positive feedbacks and interacting factors that could catch humanity off-guard and produce a true apocalyptic event. Record-breaking rains produced an extraordinary flush of new vegetation, that then dried out as record heat waves and dry conditions took hold, coupled with stronger than normal winds, and ignition. Of course the record-fire released CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to future warming. Out of all types of feedbacks, water vapor and the ice-albedo feedbacks are the most clearly understood mechanisms. Losses in reflective snow and ice cover drive up surface temperatures, leading to even more melting of snow and ice cover—this is known as the ice-albedo feedback (Curry, Schramm, and Ebert, 1995). As snow and ice continue to melt at a more rapid pace, millions of people may be displaced by flooding risks as a consequence of sea level rise near coastal communities (Biermann and Boas, 2010; Myers, 2002; Nicholls et al., 2011). The water vapor feedback operates when warmer atmospheric conditions strengthen the saturation vapor pressure, which creates a warming effect given water vapor’s strong greenhouse gas properties (Manabe and Wetherald, 1967). Global warming tends to increase cloud formation because warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation of water into the atmosphere, and warmer temperature also allows the atmosphere to hold more water. The key question is whether this increase in clouds associated with global warming will result in a positive feedback loop (more warming) or a negative feedback loop (less warming). For decades, scientists have sought to answer this question and understand the net role clouds play in future climate projections (Schneider et al., 2017). Clouds are complex because they both have a cooling (reflecting incoming solar radiation) and warming (absorbing incoming solar radiation) effect (Lashof, DeAngelo, Saleska, and Harte, 1997). The type of cloud, altitude, and optical properties combine to determine how these countervailing effects balance out. Although still under debate, it appears that in most circumstances the cloud feedback is likely positive (Boucher et al., 2013). For example, models and observations show that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations reduces the low-level cloud fraction in the Northeast Pacific at decadal time scales. This then has a positive feedback effect and enhances climate warming since less solar radiation is reflected by the atmosphere (Clement, Burgman, and Norris, 2009). The key lesson from the long list of potentially positive feedbacks and their interactions is that runaway climate change, and runaway perturbations have to be taken as a serious possibility. Table 2 is just a snapshot of the type of feedbacks that have been identified (see Supplementary material for a more thorough explanation of positive feedback loops). However, this list is not exhaustive and the possibility of undiscovered positive feedbacks portends even greater existential risks. The many environmental crises humankind has previously averted (famine, ozone depletion, London fog, water pollution, etc.) were averted because of political will based on solid scientific understanding. We cannot count on complete scientific understanding when it comes to positive feedback loops and climate change.